NYC Department of Records - City Hall Library Notes, December 2015

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City Hall Library Notes, December
2015

SPOTLIGHT ON: New York City Housing
Authority

By Christine Bruzzese

The New York City Housing
Authority completed its first public housing project in 1936.
Since then, there have been various attempts to provide
affordable public housing. This article features some resources
on public housing that can be found in the Municipal Library
collection.

Summary of Government
Housing Activities in New York City was published
in 1975 by the Housing and Development Administration. This is
a detailed guide to various city, state and federal programs to
help sponsors of public housing projects find the funding
needed.

Scarcity by Design: the
Legacy of New York City's Housing Policies by
Peter D. Salins and Gerard C.S. Mildner examines various
problems and issues involved in public and rental housing in
New York City. The focus is on municipal housing policies,
which the authors believe have created more problems than
benefits. It was published in 1992.

Housing and Community
Development in New York City: Facing the Future
was edited by Michael H. Schill. Experts on housing such as
academics, attorneys, planners and others contributed essays on
various issues relating to housing policy in New York City.
Publication date is 1999.

Next Generation
NYCHA was published by NY City Housing Authority
in 2015. This publication discusses current problems faced by
the Housing Authority. Proposed strategies for change include
improving financial stability, making housing operations more
efficient, better maintenance of housing stock and developing
good residence services.

New York City Housing Authority
published a report celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in
1984. Fifty Years of Public Housing
describes the agency's establishment, first projects built and
accomplishments over the fifty years. Photos dating from 1930's
to the 1980's enhance the text.

Going further back into the history
of the Housing Authority, the collection includes NYCHA
Annual Reports dating from 1934 to
the 1990's. A series of Brochures was
published by NYCHA from 1935 to 1937 concerning issues in
public housing and the work of the agency. A report on the
Queensbridge housing project dated 1935 presents details on the
proposed project along with plans and maps. Today Queensbridge
South and Queensbridge North, completed in 1940, are comprised
of over 3100 apartments, home to over 7,000 residents according
to NYCHA. These are just a few of the examples of historic
materials.

Other useful sources of information
include vertical files containing clippings on public housing
and related topics. City and state agencies have also published
reports that can be helpful. Researchers can check the
Municipal Library online catalog. The DORIS electronic
government documents portal is another source for the
researcher especially for more current materials from 2003 to
present. Please see: http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/govpub/home.shtml
for further information.

The NY City Housing Authority
Collection at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia
Community College includes photographs, architects' renderings,
transcripts of radio programs and much more of interest to the
researcher. Please see:
http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/COLLECTIONS.aspx?ViwType=1&ColID=2
to learn more.

An Intern's Experience at the
Municipal Library

By Mia Bruner

In 1938, librarian Rebecca Browning
Rankin hosted a radio program in which she discussed the
purpose of the Municipal Reference Library: “the
Municipal Reference Library strives to serve as the bureau of
information for both citizen and official and to help each one
understand the problems of the other.” In my time
interning at the library this fall, I've found this to be true.
However, I would add that the Municipal Library offers
information that has the potential to help us, as citizens of a
rapidly changing New York, understand each other as well. I
have had the pleasure of interning at the Municipal Library
since August 2015. In just a couple of months, I've read dozens
of reports from city agencies, rigorously evaluated city-code
containing information policy, and assisted in research about
feminist activism and the structure of city government. I've
even conducted my own research on the history of municipal
reference libraries in New York City and nationwide.

Additionally, I have grown in my
understanding of city government: its problems and successes.
The Municipal Library offers access to current government
documents collected and cataloged for use. I find this to be
incredibly special because these documents reflect the
immediate concerns and activities of communities today. I have
a background in HIV education and advocacy for public health.
Often this work left me feeling burnt out and a little hopeless
about positive change in this city. But materials at the
library illustrate a different point of view. They offer some
of the best and only iterations of information on movements and
activism in this city: records of progressive (sometimes
radical) organizing as well as political advocacy within city
agencies. Ultimately, they remind me how powerful civic
engagement can be both inside city government and outside of
it.

Finally, at the library, I have
discovered historical treasures; that is, moments that shaped
our city in enormous ways. There are histories of political
action in East Harlem, Who's Who in New York (1904), and
reports from the Department of Health during the beginning of
the AIDS Crisis. Today, I spent some of the afternoon reading
about the history of East Harlem in the Vertical Files. I read
a newspaper article from 1969 titled “Young Lords Do
City's Work in the Barrio”. It describes how the Young
Lords organized door to door lead poisoning tests to residents
along East 112th St. This story is a powerful illustration of
people working hard to protect each other. I am so grateful to
intern at a library that facilitates this kind of knowledge.
Now, when I walk through East Harlem, I have another layer of
respect for the neighborhood around me: a deeper understanding
of problems this place has faced and the ingenuity and
creativity used to address them. I find this to be true
whenever I spend time browsing the stacks at the Municipal
Library. I continually leave with a deeper understanding of
local history and current issues in New York City and the
responsibility of libraries to preserve just that.

Attendance at Metadata Basics
Webinar

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 – Sponsored by Amigos.org
through Metropolitan Library Council of New York

By Julia Robbins

Libraries and archives have a core
mission: to enable people to find information they need. In
this evolving area of information discovery, metadata is how we
make that easier, more efficient, and machine readable. This
course, offered by a library services non-profit organization,
is a four-part introduction (Metadata Principles &
Practices) aimed at librarians and archivists who are planning
digital projects. Christine Bruzzese and I attended the first
segment, devoted to defining metadata, its purposes and uses
and other basic information.

The webinar helped us understand the
components of metadata and how it helps information be
expressed in an online environment. It enables digital objects
to be properly displayed by any computer. This can be achieved
by packaging the digital file with information about the
object's layout and condition, container, the pathways to the
digital object and the linkages between the digital object and
other digital objects. We learned a bit about how the XML
programming language enables different types of metadata to be
expressed in a nesting framework.

In the Shadow of the Highway: Robert
Mosses’ Expressway and the Battle for
Downtown

By Sylvia Kollar, Director, NYC Municipal
Archives

The NYC Department of Records and
Information Services Municipal Archives presents an exhibit in
collaboration with Below the Grid Lab and the
Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

The Lower Manhattan Expressway
(LOMEX) was first proposed in 1929 as a small part of a plan to
build highways throughout the region, and then included in a
1941 National Defense proposal drafted by Robert Moses. It was
envisioned as a key connection between Long Island and the
interstate system. This 10-lane expressway would cut
across the heart of Lower Manhattan and stretch from the
Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges to the Holland Tunnel,
rising over Broome Street.

In 1962, the NYC Board of Estimate
decided not to relocate neighborhood residents to build
LOMEX. The expressway was ultimately de-mapped in 1969
due to activism and advocacy on the part of neighborhood
residents.

In the Shadow of the Highway: Robert
Moses’ Expressway and the Battle for Downtown focuses on
various aspects of the proposed highway: architectural,
political, and personal.

Report from Municipal Records
Management Division

By Terrance McCormick, Director, Municipal
Records Management Division

Municipal Records Management (MRM)
is making great strides in the areas of Records Management and
Information Governance. MRM is leading the initiative for
developing guidance on best record management practices for all
agencies. MRM will offer policy, procedural and practical
guidance to advance City agency record keeping practices. In
addition, MRM is strategizing, in collaboration with the NYC
Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications
(DoITT), to obtain and update the Electronic Content Management
platform for the city. MRM will ensure that the technical
requirements in determining the specific capabilities and
components are met. Determinations will also be made on how
each agency defines its needs and ascertaining the most viable
system to meet these needs. Further, MRM has also reached out
to all Mayoral Agencies and informed them that they will be
required to update their existing records retention schedules
and follow the MU-1 or applicable schedules created by the New
York State Archives. This will help to identify any records
eligible for disposition while identifying hard copy records
that can be converted to an electronic format for long-term
storage.

For more info on the City Hall Library, please visit
our website.

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